Google to launch first private trans-Atlantic subsea cable

18 July 2018 | Natalie Bannerman

Google Cloud has announced plans to build its first private trans-Atlantic subsea cable – Dunant, which will connect France and the US.

The new cable is set to help Google Cloud better serve its users and customers by increasing bandwidth availabity, enbaling highly secure cloud connections between the US and Europe and by guaranteeing a certain level of connection enbling Google Cloud to plan for their business in the future.

“This year, we’ve announced major expansions to our global cloud infrastructure, which helps us provide high quality services to our customers, said Jayne Stowell, strategic negotiator, Global Infrastructure at Google. “We introduced new cloud regions in the Netherlands, Montreal, Finland, and opening just yesterday, Los Angeles. We invested in three consortium subsea cables--Havfrue, HK-G, and JGA-S. And we became the first major non-telecom company to build a private intercontinental cable with our investment in the Curie cable.”

“Today, we’re announcing our newest private subsea cable project: Dunant. This cable crosses the Atlantic Ocean from Virginia Beach in the U.S. to the French Atlantic coast, and will expand our network--already the world’s largest--to help us better serve our users and customers. The Dunant cable is expected to become available in late 2020.”

Google has awarded TE SubCom with the contract to design, manufacture and lay the 6,400km, four-fibre pair cable system. Once completed it will add dedicated capacity to Google’s global network as well as enable interconnection to other subsea infrastructure in the region.

“We are proud to be working with Google on this important cable system and to be helping to increase internet performance for all,” said Sanjay Chowbey, president of TE SubCom. “The Dunant cable system will be built using SubCom’s industry-leading A1 cable family, which is optimized for projects compatible with higher DCR. As a leading supplier of submarine cable systems, we look forward to continuing to work with our global partners to create more accessible and faster internet access.”

The Dunant cable has been named after Henri Dunant, the first Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Red Cross, and is in keeping with the theme of Google’s private cable being name alphabetically.

Google says that its decision to build privately rather than purchase capacity on an existing cable or join a consortium was driven by three key factors.

Performance and latency – Building privately enables Google to choose its route based on what will provide the lowest latency.

Capacity – Because of the varied bandwidth needs of its customers, their capacity planning includes estimates of both Google’s and its customers’ needs for years to come.

Guaranteed bandwidth for the lifetime of the cable - By building its own cable the company is able to guarantee its customers a certain level of connectivity allowing them plan for their businesses going forward.